EVERYWHERE THE UNDROWNED

A poet reflects on her traumatic upbringing.

When Smith, who also works as a clinical social worker and mediator for at-risk families, was 14, she spent the summer of 1973 retaking algebra while her mother went camping with a boyfriend. For “a month and a half,” Smith lived by herself in New Orleans, assuaging her loneliness by riding the streetcar up and down Saint Charles Avenue while standing beside a 29-year-old driver named Gifford. In a visceral passage, Smith describes how, one night, she was raped at knife point by a stranger while attempting to get a cheeseburger. When her mother was “unreachable” and her summer school teacher was unsympathetic, the author confided in Gifford, who cared for her initially but also initiated a confusing sexual relationship that she was too young to comprehend. In the years following these sexual assaults, Smith finally began to understand the role her mother’s neglect had played in her suffering, realizing “that the neglect was the engine that pulled the other parts forward.” During her childhood, though, Smith writes, “It never occurred to me that it should have occurred to my mother to do more to protect me. What you get is what you get.” When the author’s mother suffered from vascular dementia and Smith became her primary caretaker, she realized that she was finally getting what she’d always wanted: her mother’s consistent presence. But at what cost? This stunningly lyrical memoir is a profoundly insightful glimpse into the complex and frightening consequences of parental neglect. As Smith’s voice naturally evolves from alienated to intensely present, the impressively concise narrative alternates between ethereal observations about everything from space to spiders and gut punches of pain, shame, revelation, and redemption.

A masterful literary memoir about caring for those responsible for our trauma.